Contests & Promotions

I haven’t written anything about the great game of Magic for quite some time, but I am in a creative mood at the moment, so, here we go! This article is aimed at the rogue PTQ player, someone who takes the game somewhat seriously, but doesn’t play established net decks. As regards to that type of player, sometimes you just have to realize when you should purchase four Arcbound Ravager

s, however, rogue decks can work and I certainly encourage those players not to give up hope – I speak from experience, as I won my first PTQ with an elf deck. I am going to discuss a deck I built myself recently, I am not going to hold any tech or ideas back because I have decided not to play this deck at any qualifiers. There is a strong chance that I will not be able to go to Philadelphia if I do qualify because I am starting my last few months of college at the moment, thus I won’t have time to test a new format. If I even get time to go to any qualifiers, I’ll be playing a deck I enjoy playing. So I have decided to share this deck, hopefully someone will find it useful. Without further ado, here is the list;

is strong against a lot of different decks, especially RDW and goblins (actually resolving NOSB against RDW is rather difficult but, if you do, then their win conditions are severely restricted). The manabase has been working fine so far, Volrath

offers some extra insurance against Reanimator and Cephalid Breakfast.

The sideboard is transformational in nature; your opponents should board out artifact removal after the first game, especially if they get to see your deck (for example, via cranial extraction). A quick aside on extractions – This card is certainly useful, however it isn’t in this list because it just doesn’t do enough, its main appeal is to hose combo decks and it often doesn’t achieve that – Life/Desire have too many different ways to combo off, Aluren

, of course, you do have the advantage that no-one should guess the exact nature of the deck initially, so they may not pick angels with their extraction. Anyway, once your opponent is defenceless against artifacts, you can bring in the Scepters and the Chants. This is great against aggressive decks, but do remember that they all have outs (disciple, sharpshooter etc) so there is still work to do once you have a Scepter with Chant. Diabolic Edict

is a card that few expect; it is a gamebreaker against decks that play a long game such as Tog or Scepter-Chant. It should also come in against decks that have cranial extraction in order to diversify your win conditions. Haunting Echoes

So, what metagame should you play this in? Well, here is a list of matchups and what I think of them. Since this will involve upwards of 10 decks, what I say will be brief – if you play a rogue deck, you really need to test it A LOT, so I advise you to do that if you are interested in playing this. I have not tested the matchups thoroughly enough to play this at a tournament; advice/strategy should be taken with a grain of salt.

1. Aggressive decks

RDW/Goblins – Very different decks, grouped together because your chances are about the same, around 50-50. RDW has a lot of disruption of its own and can kill Exalted Angel

, NOSB gives both decks headaches and should almost always be your tutor target. The scepters and chants should come in; the arenas come out as they are a liability – especially against RDW. The other cards to take out are less clear, and the right choice will change depending on the exact deck. I usually board out duress, but I keep it in against Burning Wish

stays in, then I would just trim the deck here and there – However I don’t recommend this normally, if you are doing this it clearly shows that your sideboard plans aren’t thought out and focused.

Affinity – Affinity also doesn’t enjoy NOSB, again it should be a priority to cast this quickly. However, the scepters don’t come in for this matchup. A scepter with chant is a very flimsy lock against affinity, the plan is thus to bring in the Serenity

Reanimator – This is more of a combo deck, but I always think of it as an aggressive deck. The good news is that this is pretty much a bye. Things get trickier if your opponent is running the older version of reanimator with verdant force but even then the matchup is fine. You have 8 non-targeted removal spells and 2 tutors for them, as well as duress to disrupt them. Finally, you have kor haven, which shuts them down completely unless they can get a rorix and an akroma out, the haven is great because it can’t be duressed/therapied and it is very rare that a reanimator deck can remove it when its out, as reanimators catch-all card is typically Echoing Truth

). Note that if they are running 1 toughness outlets (bouncer/looter) then consider leaving NOSB in. I find that putting an edict on a scepter is often better than a scepter with chant in this matchup.

Misc. (Elves/WW/etc) – These decks, although viable, aren’t played too much. You are well set up against aggressive decks; you will usually want to bring in the scepter plan.

2. Control decks

Rock – There is a growing conception that the Rock is underpowered and unplayable. I tend to agree, the Rock is very customisable, but this strength has become a weakness as any given metagame is hard to predict due to the wide variety of decks. Last time I built the Rock, there were around 100 cards that I wanted to put in, the Rock is best when focused for a metagame, but this isn’t really possible at the moment. I was confused for a while as to why many people had stopped playing duress in the rock, then it hit me – There’s no room for it! I can’t help but feel that this is a bad change, if I was to build the rock; I would start with 4 duress/4 therapy and work from there. Anyways, Exalted Angel

as well as the chants. If they aren’t playing scepters for some reason, then don’t bring in the artifact removal. The scepters aren’t needed, the chants on their own are enough as you only need them to force spells through as well as casting in response to upheaval. Tog is very resilient and can win from nowhere with Corpse Dance

, you should however have an edge if you play very carefully. Scepter control is a different beast, side in the same way as against tog but bring in the scepters as well (this involves bringing in most of the board, but they have few creatures so you can take out a big chunk of removal – just ensure that the removal left in the deck is diverse so that you don`t get shut down by meddling mage). Again, this is a very skill intensive matchup, the outcome will often be decided by differences in the skill level of the players rather than the differences in draws.

and Cephalid breakfast. In general, your matchups against combo decks aren’t good. Against desire, you have no realistic chance of winning. In fact, winning game1 against any of these decks will be a very rare occurrence. The scepters/chants offer hope after boarding, although you still won’t beat Minds Desire. Cephalid Breakfast is probably the best matchup of the bunch, as you have removal/haven and then the scepter plan postboard. The life matchup also gets a little better after board, you can effectively counter their chants with your own, False Cure

will force them to combo off twice on the same stack or die. The good news is that combo decks take time to perfect, so some players may misplay against you, and some people will be put off playing these decks altogether.

So, what sort of metagame is best? In a field comprised mostly of the staple decks in recent seasons, this should be in with a chance. If you feel that your metagame is going to have a lot of good combo players, then I definitely wouldn’t recommend playing this. You could certainly change the sideboard and play cranial extractions/rule of law, but those cards just don’t deal with combo decks very well, even though it looks like they should.

Finally, some general advice on sideboarding. Work out in advance what you are going to board in and out, there are only 3 minutes between each game and some players will hold you to that. In the early rounds, you are likely to play at least one random player, if you feel you can beat that person easily, then don `t use the scepters as you want them to be a surprise in future matches. If you top8, decklists will most likely be available, even if they aren’t everyone will know what you are playing by that stage. If your opponent knows your scepter plan, then shuffle your entire sideboard into your deck and then take out 15 cards so that he won’t know how many cards you have boarded. You should do this in game3 of any match you used the scepters as well.

That’s about it, thanks for reading.

Rate Article

5 (best) 4 3 2 1

Discuss Article

Click here
to discuss this article in forum or leave comments for the author.

RSS Feed
This article is provided to you by CardShark.com - A Better Way to Buy and Sell Collectable Games Online.
Please check out the rest of our site - you won't be disappointed.